We almost bought property in North Reading that sounds similar but larger—about an acre and a half. I was walking the land with our inspector, enthusing about all the potential it had for a second house, shop, etc., when he brought me up short saying, “But you know there’re wetlands over there. You can’t do a thing with most of this property.”

“What?” I said. My wife immediately trundled over to the Town Hall and found out that the situation was almost exactly what’s described here about Ashland. The listing agent pulled up just then, and I asked her, “What about the wetlands? Nobody told me about wetlands.” Her response was, “Uh….oh, yeah…uh…there are…those…uh…wetlands….”

We asked the Town what we should do. Why pay taxes on this rather large parcel, when we could do nothing with it? They were generous, and said we could cede the unusable part of the property to the town for conservation land if we wanted to avoid taxes. Of course that left us with about 9,000 expensive square feet out of 50,000 cheap ones we thought we were getting.

The weird thing is that area has had several houses on it and been a farm yard since about 1640, so why are we now getting so environmentally responsible that I couldn’t put up a greenhouse where there was a barn for 200 years? It’s just one of the great mysteries of life. Needless to say, we dodged this particular bullet, and eventually moved to another town far from the madness.

There are three terms you never want to hear in the same breath: “Wetlands,” “Real Estate,” and “Massachusetts.”

From my childhood recollections of Marshfield, MA, there were little bogs and ponds everywhere (the town's name was well-chosen). This is pretty much the prevailing landscape of eastern MA. If wetland protection has become this draconian, how is any construction possible?

I remember when I lived in Mass and Dukakis wanted to build his jail out in the boonies. The place where he wanted to build it had a lot of wetlands there and it was part of the aquifer for the city of Boston. He just got it rezoned and went ahead even though nobody in the town wanted the prison there in the first place. When Weld took over the first thing he had to deal with was the prison buildings that Dukakis had started and what he could do with them. Right about then I moved out of the area so I don't know what finally happened to that mess.

If wetland protection has become this draconian, how is any construction possible?

tjl: Bingo!

Construction is impossible here for the likes of me, but somehow developers manage to butter the landscape with $890,000 mini-mansions. Funny how that works out.

For those of you who want to read the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court opinion in this case here is the link. I'm sure interested lawyers have already been there, but if you're fascinated by wetlands horrors (and who isn't?), it makes for good reading.